This Election Will Change the World. But Not in the Way the Americans Imagined

By Robert Fisk The Independent U.K.

Saturday 29 January 2005

Shias are about to inherit Iraq, but the election tomorrow that will bring them to power is creating deep fears among the Arab kings and dictators of the Middle East that their Sunni leadership is under threat.

America has insisted on these elections - which will produce a largely Shia parliament representing Iraq's largest religious community - because they are supposed to provide an exit strategy for embattled US forces, but they seem set to change the geopolitical map of the Arab world in ways the Americans could never have imagined. For George Bush and Tony Blair this is the law of unintended consequences writ large.<snip>

Few in Iraq believe that these elections will end the insurgency, let alone bring peace and stability. By holding the poll now - when the Shias, who are not fighting the Americans, are voting while the Sunnis, who are fighting the Americans, are not - the elections can only sharpen the divisions between the country's two largest communities.

While Washington had clearly not envisaged the results of its invasion in this way, its demand for "democracy" is now moving the tectonic plates of the Middle East in a new and uncertain direction. The Arab states outside the Shia "Crescent" fear Shia political power even more than they are frightened by genuine democracy.

Don't think so. The flawed and illegitimate formalities of the western sponsored "elections" are unlikely to establish "Shia power" in Iraq. Any Arab regime that cannot establish order doesn't have power. Their first step in achieving legitimacy would have to be to evict the US and its WTO system of corporate looting. But if it does that it will be vulnerable to its own military destruction.

They have the israeli/neocon view, that the kurds should form kurdistanand that the boundaries of middle eastern states are just arbitrarylines drawn by poorly advised british civil servants... who, werethey better advised, would have drawn the lines to bring together natural nation states, as with persia and kurdistan.

"While Washington had clearly not envisaged the results of its invasion in this way, its demand for "democracy" is now moving the tectonic plates of the Middle East in a new and uncertain direction. The Arab states outside the Shia "Crescent" fear Shia political power even more than they are frightened by genuine democracy."

But isn't democracy about rule by the majority? Especially when the majority has agreed to include the minority in the creation of a constitution, even though the minority Sunni didn't vote in the numbers the west had hoped? If the Shia form the majority of the population, then what is so bad about them winning the vote? Its not clear to me what the author suggests...avoid democracy in the ME lest it alarm the dictators? Aren't we Democrats always pointing out the dictators the repubs have cosied up to in South America in the past? It seems to me he's saying things should be left just the way they are, in spite of the fact that the way they are, or have been, is like a room full of gunpowder and various maniacs running around with torches.

9. I understand that the Shia will have a theocracy and Sunnis believe

that the Shia will take some sort of revenge of the Sadam/Sunni atrocities. I think that there is a lot of concern that there will be a civil war. If there is a political vacuum during a civil war, Iran might decide that Iraq is prime pickins, they have always hated each other.

I hope none of that happens, maybe there will be a peaceful transition. The Iraqis have gone through a lot of hell already.

Besides, * isn't right about having a preemptive strike policy - it puts us here in the US in more danger.

I think Bush has bought himself two or three months in Iraq and five points in 'approval' for himself.

It'll take two or three months for the Sunnis, Shia, and Kurds to come to some conclusion about whether to bother with a federation and cut all the deals involved- for breaking up, for in a Kurd-Shia temporary alliance vs the Sunnis that means civil war, or some kind of federation run via Saudi and Iranian money smoothing the way.

Allawi has displeased the assassins and he's not long for this world, and I'm sure a variety of players think knocking him off goes a long way toward forcing the American military out of the country.

The truth of this election is that means Iraq is entering its murkiest internal machinations yet. Now that 'democracy' has gotten its due, the real game for the future of the country is being played behind a lot of close doors in Ankara, Mosul, Damascus, Basra, Teheran, Baghdad, and Riyadh.

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